The Iowa State club softball team is back and coming off one of their best seasons yet.

The team finished last season with a confidence boost when they played in the National Club Softball Association World Series in Georgia last May. That was the first time the team qualified for the world series in the history of their seven-year program.

“The first year it was together, they wore T-Shirts with duct tape numbers,” said club President Katie Irwin.

The team didn’t start out this way, just seven years ago they were in the beginning stages of forming a team. Now seven years later, they are making a name for themselves as National Club Softball Association World Series qualifiers.

It took a long time for the club softball team to make it to the world series, yet alone regionals. Just four years ago, the team made their first ever regionals appearance.

The road to the world series was not an easy one.

“This year our practices are run a little different, just more serious, working on more fundamental things,” Irwin said.

Iowa State made the trip to Georgia in May. While there the team saw the differences in how other teams were structured and how they play. They took this opportunity and changed the way they run their practices.

The team is made up of 19 players and three volunteers. Together they practice working on skills such as fielding, hitting and pitching.

Club softball works on putting all these skills together and making their team work as a whole.

“Last year I tried out in the winter because they ended up needing more girls for the spring. They weren’t ready for losing players,” said club fundraising chair Maddie Lynch.

This season the team wanted to focus on promoting tryouts in the fall, so they were prepared for the spring. They wanted to better the chemistry between the newcomers and the veterans, which has developed throughout the fall tryouts.

Their plan worked.

“We had a record tryout,” said sophomore Claire Solsma.

The team had 78 people show interest at ClubFest and around 40 players who tried out for the team — creating a new record for the amount of people to tryout.

Even though the team had 40 players trying out, they only lost three players from last season. This made the tryout process more difficult for the returning players in choosing seven out of the 40.

The surprising increase is due to the help of the current players on the team.

They’ve had the ability to reach out to high schoolers which gives them the ability to bring more players into the program.

Two seniors on the team help coach at high schools in the area. Irwin coaches at Ballard High School in Huxley, Iowa, and vice president Hannah Cole coaches at West Delaware High School in Manchester, Iowa. This gives the team a huge advantage.

“We just have more ability to reach out to the students,” Irwin said. “We came out really strong [winning against Iowa this season].”

With high expectations coming off of last season, the team hopes to do even better this upcoming season. The team started the fall league with a series sweep over Iowa.

“Our record counts in the fall and the spring. So already we’ve won our first three games against Iowa so that acquaints us well for regionals,” Lynch said.

The Cyclones look to continue the momentum from last season in this coming season. They will play their first home game against Kansas on Saturday, Oct. 21.